By Gina Lee
Investing.com – The U.S. dollar was down on Tuesday as the COVID-19 pandemic as investors prepare for a difficult earning season.
This comes as the U.S. announced on Thursday that over 16 million people claimed unemployment since March 21.
The U.S. Dollar Index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies slipped 0.15% to 99.183 by 11:55 PM ET (4:55 AM GMT).
“The backdrop over the past week has been “no news is good news,” which has boosted risk assets,” Mark McCormick (NYSE:MKC), global head of foreign exchange strategy at TD Securities, told CNBC.
“We don’t expect this dynamic to last much longer. As we leave the acute phase of the crisis, the market will have to deal with the underlying data and the uncertainty of the CV-19 exit strategies. The latter will be piecemeal and bumpy. It’s a dance of fits and starts rather than a binary event of economy on/off. In turn, we expect another bump in the USD,” he added.
The USD/JPY pair was also down 0.13% to 107.62. The USD/CNY pair lost 0.07% to 7.0453 as China prepares to release its March trade data later in the day.
Down Under, the AUD/USD pair gained 0.64% to 0.6422, and the NZD/USD pair gained 0.62% to 0.6123. The risk-linked currencies received a boost from the jump in oil prices as OPEC+ agreed to a production cut of almost 10 million barrels on Sunday. TheGBP/USD pair gained 0.44% to 1.2563.